*the ‘tj’ sound is quite difficult and I don’t believe there is a good way to transliterate it into English. It is similar to the ‘sj’ sound, which is kind of like ‘sh’ i.e. ”shoe.” The difference with ‘tj’ is that your top and bottom sets of teeth do not touch like they do with the ‘sj’ sound. Ok, this may sound very odd, but the following strange description of mine may help you with the pronunciation: And, please for those of you that have a better explanation for this sound, please share. You want to touch your tongue to the back of your bottom front teeth and kind of whisper ‘hew’ and then whatever else the rest of the word is, of course. Honestly, whenever I say a word with ‘tj’ in it, I feel like a snake slithering my tonge:)

**beyond 1-20, after 20, 30, 40, and so on, you just add the number to the end. So, 21 is tjueen, 32 is trettito, and so forth.

Norwegians use double digits to separate phone numbers, like other European countries. For example: 22 54 19 30

Dates are expressed numerically as follows: 26.06.1985 with the day first, month second, and year third, separated by decimals.

Money is expressed with commas, i.e. 77,00 NOK would be 77 Norwegian kroner. 87,10 NOK would be 87 Norwegian kroner and 7 øre.

I attended St. Olaf College in Northfield, MN, where I majored in Norwegian and History. During college, I spent almost a year living in Oslo, Norway, where I attended the University of Oslo and completed an internship at the United States Embassy. I have worked for Concordia Language Villages as a pre-K Norwegian teacher and have taught an adult Norwegian language class. Right now, I keep up by writing this Norwegian blog for Transparent Language. Please read and share your thoughts! I will be continuing this blog from my future residence in the Norwegian arctic!

Comments:

Norwegian, toughest language ever! I failed my Norwegian classes in Oslo but still have a couple phrases I drop every once in awhile. Who knows, maybe we were on campus at the same time. Thanks for the post!

I thought norwegian would be difdicult. Thank god it’s a very easy language.at least compared to Greek Japanese and Korean I assure you it’s the easiest one! I don’t understan why people have a hard time with norwegian…

@Anne Francis @Anne Francis – Mange takk for the information! 🙂 I’ve done a Google search, and yes, the expression is sometimes used. (Less often than tusen takk, though, it seems.) In my mind the expression just sounded more ”Danish” than Norwegian, but then again, being a bilingual person, I often mix things up! :-/

The easiest way I know how to describe the tj sound for Americans or English-first speakers is to make the sound of a cat hissing, then bring your tongue to the top of your mouth further forward until it’s about the middle-front of your tongue that’s slightly touching, not the back of your tongue like the sound of a cat hissing. It’s very similar in some ways to the German ch such as in “ich.” At least, IMO. 🙂

i was taught 1 – 10 by my mother at age 8 . she would not teach me more as she said “WE are AMERICANS ” .
SHE WAS THE FIRST OF HER FAMILY BORN HERE IN 1900 . TWO OLDER BROTHERS WERE BORN IN NORWAY AND THREE YOUNGER AND THREE YOUNGER SISTERS WERE BORN HERE

Thanks for the post! Congratulations! Tusen Takk og grattuleren! Obrigado pela postagem e congratulações! It was also very useful for help Brazilian people how to learn the viking language! Há de bra! See you! Até logo! God bless you!!!